The Monitor's 2010 summer reading guide goes online on Monday. But until then, here's a list of recent books lively enough to keep the pages turning yet smart enough to keep you thinking. In other words, good reads – but no empty calories.

3. Arthur & George, by Julian Barnes (Knopf Doubleday, 494 pp, $16). This novelized account of a true incident in which Sherlock Holmes’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, battled to overturn an unjust conviction is “as pleasing a read as they come, and yet it is also the chance to admire the skillful work of a top contemporary novelist.” (CSM review 1/17/06)

4. The Perfect Summer, by Juliet Nicolson (Grove Press, 290 pp., $15). This “sparkling social history about Edwardian society on the brink of World War I” makes “perfect beach reading for Anglophiles.” (CSM review 5/25/07)

5. Provenance, by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo (Penguin, 352 pp., $16). This “preposterous but true story of ... perhaps the greatest art fraud of the 20th century” is “impossible to put down.” (CSM review 8/11/09)

6. Let Me Finish, by Roger Angell (Mariner Books, 320 pp., $15). Longtime New Yorker editor Roger Angell gracefully recalls “his childhood, service in World War II, and work at the [New Yorker] – along with his love of sailing, movies, and long car trips.” (CSM review 6/6/06)